RICHARD

STRAUSS
Don Juan, Op. 20
BORN: June 11, 1864, in Munich
DIED: September 8, 1949, in Garmish-Partenkirchen, Bavaria
WORK COMPOSED: 1888–89
WORLD PREMIERE: November 11, 1889, in Weimar, conducted by the composer.

The lover as Romantic hero: it’s an idea as old as Romanticism itself. Beginning with medieval
tales of knightly ardor and devotion, it finds its most complex realization in the legend of Don
Juan. That fabled libertine has inspired playwrights (including Molière and Shaw), poets (most
notably Byron) and composers. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is the most famous musical
treatment of the Don Juan legend, but it is followed closely by Richard Strauss’ tone poem Don
Juan.

Strauss found his inspiration for this piece in a verse fragment by the Austrian writer Nikolaus
Lenau. In that work, which Lenau left unfinished at his death in 1851, the poet envisions Don
Juan not as the cruel seducer we find in other versions of his story but, rather, as a dreamer
driven on an impossible pursuit of ideal beauty. “That magical circle, immeasurably wide, of
beautiful femininity,” he declares in Lenau’s verses, “I want to traverse in a storm of pleasure,
and die of a kiss upon the lips of the last woman.”

Lenau’s text inspired in Strauss a bold and original flight of musical fantasy, one that produced
the first of a series of great tone poems the composer wrote during the last dozen years of the
19th century. (This is the fourth of these works Seattle Symphony has performed this season, the
others being Don Quixote, Also sprach Zarathustra and Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.) Strauss
advanced no specific program, no written narrative, for Don Juan, though it is doubtful that any
verbal explication could enhance the experience of the composition. It is impossible to miss the
suggestions of sensuality, bravado and delirious flight that flow from the music.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The piece opens with a great exultation by the entire orchestra. From this emerges an
exceptionally energetic theme over a throbbing accompaniment. It presents, notes Strauss’
biographer Norman Del Mar, “Don Juan himself in all his passionate glory and lust for life.” Two
contrasting episodes strike a more lyrical tone. The first, preceded by an atmospheric passage
featuring solo violin, brings a soaring love song, the second a voluptuous oboe solo. There
follows a bold new theme, announced by the horns. It transforms Strauss’ picture of Don Juan,
who now appears not just passionate but heroic.

Scored for 3 flutes, the third doubling piccolo; 2 oboes and English horn; 2 clarinets; 2 bassoons
and contrabassoon; 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba; timpani and percussion; harp,
and strings.

© 2016 Paul Schiavo